Depending on their size and technological sophistication, drones can cost as little as $US500 ($770), a paltry investment to take out a $US10 million ($15.5 million) Abrams tank. Some of them may carry ammunition to increase the impact of their explosion, Reisner said. These could be rocket-propelled grenades, he said, or self-forging warheads known as explosively shaped penetrators, or EFPs, which were widely used in roadside bombs during the Iraq war. Reisner has compiled videos of tanks in Ukraine being chased by drones or drones flying into their open turrets.
“Welcome to the 21st century, it's amazing, actually,” said Reisner, a historian and former armor reconnaissance officer who oversees the training of Austrian forces at the Theresian Military Academy.
There is no easy way to defend
In November, just weeks after receiving the Abrams tanks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “It is difficult for me to say that they play the most important role on the battlefield. Their numbers are very small.”
Some officials and experts believe that Ukrainian commanders had planned to save the Abrams for future offensive operations next year and resisted sending them to the front, where they risked losing the few they had. Instead, the tanks were deployed earlier this year with the American-trained and equipped 47th Mechanized Brigade as Ukraine sought but failed to retain control of Avdiivka, a stronghold in eastern Donbas which fell into the hands of Russian troops in February.
Reisner said the drones, which can include FPV, may have been able to engage the Abrams tanks because the 47th Brigade did not appear to have the protection of short-range air defense systems such as the German-designed Gepard self-propelled guns that help safeguard them. Kyiv
FPVs can be stalled by jams that interrupt their connection to the remote pilot. Shotguns and even simple fishing nets have been used to destroy or capture some on the battlefields of Ukraine.
A kamikaze drone being readied for action by Ukrainian soldiers.Credit: The New York Times
“At this stage, the most effective means used to defeat FPVs is electronic warfare and various types of passive protection,” including additional armor and other types of shielding on tanks, said Michael Kofman, senior program fellow Russia and Eurasia from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He said defeating the FPVs required a “tailored battlefield approach” and that Ukrainian forces were becoming more adept at this.
But Reisner suggested that Ukraine was so desperate for air defenses that it was depriving tanks of full protections by sending in Gepards or other short-range anti-aircraft weapons that would traditionally be deployed on the front lines to protect cities and critical infrastructure.
So are tanks obsolete?
Reisner said military engineers had been looking for new ways to destroy tanks for as long as they had been used on the battlefield, and that FPVs did not render Abrams and other advanced tanks like the German Leopards in Ukraine obsolete.
“If you want to take over the terrain, you need a tank,” Reisner said of the deadliest weapon in ground warfare.
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But he added that FPVs were a key part of what some analysts believed would drive future clandestine warfare, with remote-controlled weapons fighting on the surface. In this circumstance, soldiers would direct weapons systems from nearby underground bunkers to ensure they could maintain lines of sight and radio frequency on the weapons.
Those ground battles could largely pit first-person view drones against unmanned ground vehicles, Reisner said: “They'll fight each other as in The Terminator.”
This article originally appeared on The New York Times.
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